This past weekend our school hosted it's first "Night of the Ninja," a tradition I'd followed for over 20 years at my school in Virginia. It was a huge hit. After all, people like to be scared. There's some counter-intuitive psychology behind that fact, but it's real and I've included a link to an article explaining it at the end of this post.

During my "Night of the Ninja", which I have to say is better than ever now that I'm on an acre of fenced land, the kids arrived at 6 PM. This year I had eleven. They played games outdoors, ran around, etc. I was a little concerned about how much I should organize it to keep them entertained. You'd think by now I'd know that children in a group spontaneously "self-entertain". I have two suction arrow darts on the roof of my building to prove it.

As darkness fell, we lit the bonfire and had pizza. Then the Ninja arrived, slowly entering the grounds of my school and driving past us at about half a mile per hour, inspecting us. The kids gathered closer to the fire. I told them I had a bad feeling about this. "Let me go talk to him," I reassured them.

I went around back and spoke with the Ninja, agreeing on the rules of combat. By the way, I had two helpers, so no child was ever unattended, and those helpers were great, truly amazing. The only rule I actually gave them was safety first, but let's all have fun. When I returned to the kids, I told them, "okay, combat will be with foam covered wiffle ball bats, dipped in dragon's blood. It's been nice knowing all of you. Who's first?"

Hands flew into the air, even from kids who had been asking me all evening if the Ninja was real, etc. etc. One by one, I took them around the side of the building, they fought the Ninja with foam bats, and then were ushered into the back door of my school, where a helper told them to brush their teeth, put on their PJs, and set their sleeping bag next to their buddy's (a buddy system was used all night).

Outside, the circle around the fire grew smaller, as kids went off to fight the Ninja, but none returned. Emotions were at roller coaster intensity.

By the end of the evening, everyone was inside, PJs on, in sleeping bags next to their buddy, watching the movie (The Iron Giant).

I asked parents the following week what sort of feedback they'd received. All of them said Night of the Ninja was topic A for the rest of the weekend. I'm especially happy that some of those kids, as young as five, were on their first sleep over. It's so interesting that they, collectively, worked themselves into a terror about fighting the Ninja, and yet competed to be chosen next to fight him.